can i hold you?
please?
[i need this]
closer…
lean into me…
[she strokes his back]
Ssh!
don’t talk…
just feel…
do you feel it?
[do you feel anything?]
be present with me…
please…
[she exhales]
closer…
come closer,
please…
your skin…
it’s so…
what?
what did you say?
i’m sorry…
i thought you said something.
[silence]
[she inhales]
i love how your hair smells…
[silence]
goodnight
x
[she kisses his back]
words (c) Kat McDonald 2025
p.s. it’s been a while, innit?
this crushing pain,
heavy
on my chest,
is love.
incalculable,
inseverable,
inside.
outside,
the world spins.
and spin she does
with faithful and fateful
constancy.
hateful in her headstrong determination;
she overlooks,
with flippancy
and nonchalance,
the rocks she throws off
that hit, every time,
with insidious precision.
cold, callous, calculated –
they hit.
they break.
they destroy.
but she doesn’t care.
why should she?
she has no heart.
she is made of stone,
she is stoning.
the body, bruised.
the mind, splintered.
i watch,
from within
and outwith,
her relentless trajectory.
with every sunrise
she brings chaos,
pain.
what to do
except be there;
to repair the broken threads,
to rebuild the crumbling walls,
to love,
to touch,
to listen?
and i listen.
i listen hard.
my ears, and heart,
determined
to hear her
reason
and rationale.
my fuse is short;
my trajectory, shorter.
unyielding.
purposeful.
stoic.
she spins
incessantly.
in a wake of emotional carnage
i watch
as his boat struggles –
amid the flood of her Charybdis –
to remain afloat;
battered
bruised
breaking apart.
it breaks the heart.
oh this ache.
this yearning –
borne of unsurmountable frustration –
drives harder.
there is no rhyme
nor reason;
no rosy hue in her rationale.
all is monochrome.
fighting fire
with fire,
i am immovable.
i will not bow to her.
i will not watch her seek and destroy,
or play him like a toy.
this lioness heart,
fiercely protective,
will savage;
ravage the bare bones
of her causal agent.
i am immune
to her disease.
she is sick.
this crushing pain,
heavy
on my chest,
is love.
incalculable,
inseverable,
inside.
love will prevail,
nurture and protect.
l’amour est un cas de force majeure.
(c) Kat McDonald 2014
a new fever has me in its clutches… i can feel her long, bony, icy fingers twist my spine and contort my brain… i need paracetamol… i need a glass of water… i need to sleep…
but sleep won’t come easy…
paracetamol… a glass of water… bed.
i climb into bed… i am shaking… my hands are tingling… am i hungry..? am i over-tired..? i feel exhausted… i feel sick… nausea rushes at me like a jealous mistress… my head feels twice the size it should be… my forehead is hot… my feet are cold… i am shaking… i swallow the pills and wash them down with a long drink of water.
i climb into bed… the pillow feels cool beneath my heavy skull… i close my eyes and then it starts… i must ride this out until it breaks…
micro flashing neon lights spark inside my minds eye, igniting visions… visions… murky, but i look deeper… deeper into the grain and chaos… i see a face… a man’s face… it is Stalin… he is standing outside an old house… a house on a wild beach… a house with a red door… suddenly, he vomits all over himself… then dissolves into a puddle on the ground… i look out to sea… but the sea is not a sea… it is a vast expanse of rippling silken fabric, billowing in the breeze… i look up to the sky… a pterodactyl swoops in low over the water towards me… i duck for cover and close my eyes tight, anticipating being snatched up by the giant predatory bird… nothing… the wind has picked up the pace and snatches my breath… i gasp and open my eyes… i find myself atop one of the steel eagles that grace the lofty Chrysler Building in NYC… i am terrified… the wind is strong… my hair whips my face… i am too scared to look down… but i do… and now my palms are wet, sweating… i cannot hold on, i lose my grip… but wait! i am typing… i am sat at a desk, in the middle of a forest, and i am typing… typing incoherent words on a sheet of stiff, white paper… The typewriter is old and battered and clunky… a pale blue Olivetti electric typewriter… my curious eyes follow the flex… it is plugged into a giant snail… the sound of my fingers tapping the keys rattles my brain… the words make no sense… the words make me shiver… i open a cupboard… an old farmhouse style larder- just like the one my Aunt Mary had at Fullerton Farm… i open the door and find hundreds of tins of Baked Beans… i close the door… but the door is a mirror now… i stare at my own reflection… i smile to her, but she does not smile back… she is naked… pale, gaunt… two headless horses appear behind me… one black as night, The other white as snow… the white one speaks to me in a language i cannot comprehend… but we start to dance… the floor beneath me turns to silver sand… the sun is beating down on me… i pull the quilt around me and nestle into the comfort and familiarity of my bed, despite the madness of these visions… visions i have no control over… i cannot make them stop… they come, in a flood… my mind is a fairground… i look at my hands… six fingers on each hand… i cut off the tips of my fingers with a large pair of shears… they are bleeding… i put on a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves and go outside into the night… there are two moons in the sky… both are full and resplendent… the night is cool… i am alone… i look to my left and the buildings start to crumble and fall… an apple falls from the sky and rolls towards me, stopping at my feet… It speaks to me… beckoning me to take bite… i pick up the lilac apple and bite into its soft, juicy flesh… it tastes salty… so i throw it away… it explodes on impact… in the distance, i hear a child’s voice… it is my lover’a son… he appears out of nowhere, wearing a flappy bird t-shirt and red jeans… he is barefoot, as i am… he takes my hand and tells me to follow him… i do… suddenly, i find myself, alone, inside a computer… i look at my hands… i am made of pixels… i peer through the screen and see a morbidly obese man, sitting on his sofa with a boxful of donuts… he is playing a computer game… he is controlling me and my movements… he is controlling the CGI world i now find myself locked in… i like it here, but i cannot stay… i call out for my lover’a son… but he is gone… he has left me a note… it reads “gone fishing, be home Tuesday!”… i smell coffee… i look down and find myself in a bathtub full of warm, steaming coffee… it stains my skin… my lover appears… he dries my wet skin with a cloud, gently patting it dry… he lovingly combs my wet hair and strokes my face… we kiss… and float out the wind into space… we swim through the stratosphere and look back at Earth… it looks radiant and blue… i take a bite… it tastes like battery acid… the shock cuts my tongue and i spit out blood and a chunk of France… “it never used to taste like this…” says my lover, his eyes filled with tears… he spits a mouthful of India out into the blue stratospheric air… he fades into the night… “soon…” he says, blowing kisses as he dissolves into the ether… i find myself in a deep, Belfast sink… the cold tap is turned on and the sink is filling up with tiny sea horses and goldfish… they sparkle and shimmer and swim around me… but i need to urinate… i open my eyes, climb out of bed and make my way to the bathroom across the hall… my legs are shaking… i feel weak… perhaps sleep will come soon… i hope for a dreamless sleep… but instead, i find myself in a field full of rabbits… hundreds and thousands of rabbits… rabbits of all different colours… the pink ones are my favourites… odd… i hate the colour pink… but they are the friendliest… i reach up to the sky and reel in the sun… i hold it in my hands… it burns, but only momentarily… my cold hands chill its fire and it turns from burning amber to brittle blue… the sun shatters in my hands… i am left holding fragments of turquoise glass… i throw the shards up into the air… they tinkle and twinkle against the sky, like dying light… The tranquility of their peaceful chimes turns into an ugly chaos as the fragments of harmless light turn into bullets… they rain down all around me… everything has turned to dust… children lie dead around me… women scream… another bomb goes off… the ground shakes, like the thunder of the apocalypse… there is no colour… everything is grey… the course of death… i hear the wail of an electric guitar… someone, somewhere is playing a guitar… it wails, like a wounded animal… i cover my ears and crouch down, holding myself… crying… i open my eyes and see a young deer, chewing a leafy twig, at the foot of my sweating bed…
the pillow is damp… i turn it over and, with trembling hands, i gulp down a glass of cold, clean water… i close my eyes… please let me sleep… a dreamless sleep… please… these rapid fire flashbacks of former trips inside my minds eye and visions of my subconscious’ innermost thoughts and fears, as surreal as they are, are raping my brain… i am exhausted… i want calm… i want to feel well again… i look at the time… three hours have passed… i have been away for three hours…
i take two more pills, and water… and close my eyes…
but wait! my feet are covered in sand…
(c) Kat McDonald 2014
oh Daddy…
at 13, i thought i knew everything.
at 13, i thought i could take on the world – and win.
at 13, i thought everything should evolve around me – including the sun.
at 13, i thought the world owed me a favour.
at 13, i thought i could have whatever i wanted – when i wanted.
at 13, i never thought about mortality.
at 13, my father died.
at 13, i truly knew how it felt to cry. to really cry.
at 13, i truly knew what injustice felt like – why my father?
at 13, i became angry and cynical.
at 15 i had to put up, shut up, wise up and grow up.
but i did it all wrong.
memories of my teenage years are broken.
i skipped school to dye my hair red.
i shaved my head.
i stole cigarettes from my mother, and porn from my brother.
i dyed my hair yellow
i partied with punks and dyed my hair black.
i sunbathed on railway tracks.
i devoured great literature and took too many pictures.
i sketched body parts, studied Italian and art.
i pierced my own nose and kept a diary of prose.
i took LSD and smoked skunk.
i braved electric fences to be with a wolf pack.
i bleached my hair.
i really didn’t care.
for too long, i didn’t care about anything or anyone. i was full of rage.
when my father died, he left my world starved of light.
i was scared.
i was scared to death of death – thoughts of my father’s corpse rotting in a hole in the ground.
i was scared to love.
i kept people at a distance for fear of losing them.
i feared emptiness.
as i grew up, i felt cheated; cheated out of how the father-child relationship changes, how it develops into a solid friendship. a close friendship.
my father never saw me grow up; he did not come to my 18th birthday party or drive me to the airport; he was never there to disapprove of my boyfriends or tease my girlfriends; he never saw me drive my own car or break bread in my first home; he never saw me perform.
when my father died, it was as though someone turned off the big light.
and i was afraid of the dark.
i miss my father. even now.
memories of that Sunday morning when my mother and brother came into my bedroom to tell me:
“Kathryn, darling… Daddy’s died”
memories of my own screams and wretching still haunt me. still as real as though it happened yesterday.
and i am still afraid. afraid of loss.
i fear that one day i will forget what he looked like.
people say i look like my father, but some days i feel i am drowning in my own blind panic as i try to envisage his face. or how he smelled. that fresh soap & water scent. but what soap did he use? i can’t remember.
‘oh Daddy why you?’
my father taught me many things; how to fly a kite, how to grow vegetables; how to knit and sew; how to skip and how to drive; how to shoot a gun and skin a rabbit; how to bath a dog and how to waltz.
he taught me how to have fun.
my father had infinite patience, something i haven’t inherited from his gene pool. i have precious little of that, but i am learning.
my father’s death taught me many, many things: about life, about love, about loyalty and the importance of family and friendship… but mostly he taught me about myself.
i am no longer afraid to tell people that i love them because life is too short not to.
my father was 52 when he died. i look at my mother and i feel for her. she lost her husband, her lover, the father of her children, her best friend and confidant, and a companion for her in the winter years of her life.
knowing love myself now, i can only imagine her pain and the loneliness of facing her own mortality – alone.
life is short.
we must live each day as if it were our last – and not waste a moment.
we must not take anything or anyone for granted – we can lose everything in a heartbeat, or heart attack as in my father’s case.
we must consider the little things… every detail… how they brush their hair from their forehead, their smile, their favourite shirt, their chosen soap.
and we must love. truly, madly, deeply.
and we must know no fear.
we must tell our family and friends that we love them. every day, in every way.
we must.
why?
because at 13, you think you have year upon year of living and loving and laughter. but i know better…
don’t leave anything to chance.
don’t live with regret – or leave this world, full of woe and wretched of regrets of ‘if onlys’.
so say it now. it’s only 3 words. 3 small words.
but you know they mean everything. so say it now…
“i love you”
and i do: ‘i still love you, Daddy’
(c) Kat McDonald 2014
Inner Focus 